For the last twenty-five years I've always had a pick up. 'Whitey', a 1972 GMC, was the first vehicle that I bought with my own money (technically I had bought a moped and a motorcycle prior but that's another story). I think I paid $1200 for it and at the time it was everything I could scrape up. There is a calm to owning an old truck. People ran into me all the time and I really didn't care. An undercover FBI agent smashed in to me and financed my first trip to New Orleans. I shit you not- the insurance check was from the FBI. A cabbie and a school bus also hit me. I told both not to worry about it and they acted as if I were granting them some magic kingdom. An old truck is a simplicity.

Of course it was also a pain in the ass. Before I switched to electronic ignition, the points used to go out and I'd have to set the timing. I carried a timing light and dwell meter in the toolbox and could do the whole operation pretty fast. I drove it to Ventura to fish squid and to Michigan a couple times to visit my parents. Sometimes I miss that simplicity, but not the poverty.